[Serious] How many reasonable solutions are there to any particular social issue?

[Rhizomorph13]

Secular Humanism is simply NOT a religion and you are muddying the waters unnecessarily.

Maybe it would clarify things to be stricter about the word "secular." 

I don't think that it simply means "non-religious." It is an attitude or policy held in regard to religion. Specifically, it means that you think a given area (government, education, ethical choices) should be made without regard to religious dogma. (So it wouldn't make sense to say that people before religion, like cavemen, were secular. Because they didn't have a policy in regard to religion.)

This means that you could have a secular government even if everyone in the government was religious. They just agree that the government itself shouldn't operate on religious principles. 

I think a secular humanist might in fact hold certain ideas which sound religious. Maybe a belief in the afterlife, or something like that. But he would acknowledge that such beliefs shouldn't form public policy.

In practice it might be kind of tricky, since a person who really believes his religion is the Truth would want to use its principles in policy decisions. But as an ideal or a policy it makes sense. 

Humanism has various meanings. It originally meant Renaissance scholars who studied non-Christian writing, especially the Greeks and Romans. Of course the Greeks and Romans had their own religion, so a lot of what they were reading wasn't atheistic. 

But I think that any society which wants to welcome diversity would pretty much require a secular government, education, etc. And humanists (in the modern sense) would hold to their own reason-based beliefs and argue for them in the marketplace of ideas. If they made it into an assertion that they know the Truth, then it starts to seem religion-like -- or at least ideological -- and maybe stops being secular.

You can't have a secular government with all religious people. I mean, I get it, you can try but...

your ideas inform your actions and if your ideas are informed by a religion, that will color your governments policies.

You said, "I think a secular humanist might in fact hold certain ideas which sound religious. Maybe a belief in the afterlife, or something like that." That wouldn't be secular as per this definition, "denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis."

Make no error; I understand that this is only the start of the discussion and dictionary definitions don't settle things, but I AM attempting to clarify things by using a simple, strict definition of secular that occludes mystical ideas full stop.